CHAPTER I
A RETURN
The Squire shut to the gate in the garden wall of the Dower House and stepped out across the park. His face was lit up with gratification, his step was as light as that of an elderly man of seventeen stone very well could be.
He had been to see Virginia, and she had given him the news that had caused this elation.
She had just come down from Scotland, where John Spence had taken a moor, leaving Dick amongst the grouse. Mrs. Clinton was there too, and Joan, and a large house-party besides. The Squire had been asked, but it was many years since the twelfth had caused a stir in his movements, and he had refused. Didn't care much about it; might come to them later, when they moved down, for the pheasants. It was a not unpleasant change for him to have the house entirely to himself. But he had got a little tired of his solitary condition after a fortnight, and had been extremely glad to see Virginia, who had come South to meet a friend on her way from America to Switzerland.
It seemed that young Inverell—the Earl of Inverell, twenty-seven years of age, master of mines as well as acres, handsome and amiable as well as high-principled—in fact the very type and picture of young Earls—whose Highland property marched with that which John Spence had rented, had been constantly of their party, even to the extent of putting off one of his own.
The attraction? Joan.
There could be no doubt about it, Virginia had said. He was head over ears. And Joan was as gay as a lark. It was the sweetest thing to see them together—a picture of adorable youth, and love, unspoken as yet, but shining out of their eyes and ringing in their laughter for everyone to see and hear.
She had enlarged on the enchanting spectacle, and the Squire had listened to her tale, not so much because he "cared about that sort of thing," but so as to assure himself that it was undoubtedly a true one, on both sides, and that Joan, especially, would not be likely to rebel a second time.
How providentially things worked out! Young Inverell was a parti beside whom the eligibility of Bobby Trench paled perceptibly. Bobby Trench, socially and financially, would have been a good match. This would be a great one. If it would not "lift" the Clintons of Kencote, which the Squire was persuaded no marriage whatever could do, it would at least point their retiring worth. It would bring them into that prominence in which, to speak truth, they had always been somewhat lacking.
And he was a nice young fellow too, so the Squire had always heard; already beginning modestly to play the part in public affairs which was expected of the head of his house; untouched as yet by the staleness of the world, which had touched Bobby Trench so much to the Squire's disgust, until he had closed his senses to it; and a fitting mate in point of youth and good looks for a beautiful young girl like Joan, which Bobby Trench could hardly have been said to be, in spite of his ever youthful behaviour.
Really, it was highly gratifying. It just showed that there was no need to hurry these things. If Joan had taken the first person that came along—a young fellow he had never thought much of himself, but had allowed to take his chances out of old friendship to his father—she would have missed this. The child was a good child. She would do credit to any station. Countess of Inverell! Nothing in that, of course, but—well, really the whole thing was highly gratifying.
Why hadn't his wife written about it?
There was nothing in that. She always left out of her letters the things she might have known he would like to hear. Virginia was quite certain; and she could be trusted on such a subject, or indeed on any.
Well, one got through one's troubles. It was extraordinary how sunshine came after rain, or would be if one didn't believe in a wise Providence overruling everything for our good. A few months ago there had been that terrible affair, now buried and forgotten——
The brightness left his face as his thoughts touched on that subject. It was buried, sadly, though perhaps mercifully, enough; but it was not forgotten. It was thought of as little as possible, but the debt still rankled—the debt that could not be paid. It came up at nights, when sleep tarried, which fortunately happened seldom. But time was adjusting the burden. It would not be felt much longer.
The thought of it now came only as a passing shadow to heighten the sunshine of the present. In fact this gleam of sunshine seemed to remove the shadow finally. He had done, all that he could do, had kept back nothing, had satisfied his honour. An obligation to so old a friend as Sedbergh need not weigh on any man.
It would be ungrateful not to recognise how plainly things had been "ordered." Apart from the curious accidents of the problem—the fact that "the woman" had not been condemned for that crime; that she had already paid her penalty; that the other woman had been connected in such a way that it had been possible to silence her by a perfectly innocent transaction, carried out by perfectly innocent people—facts surely beyond coincidence, and of themselves demanding belief in an overruling Providence—apart from all this there had been poor Susan's death, no longer demanding the least pretence of lamentation, but to be regarded as a clear sign that the account had been squared and no further penalty would be exacted.
And now there was this new satisfaction, as a further most bountiful token of favour. How was it possible that there could be those who did not believe in a God above, when signs were so plain to those who could read them? It would be churlish now not to throw off all disagreeable thoughts of the past, and not to take full pleasure in the brightness of present and future.
As the Squire came round a group of shrubs that masked the lawn from the carriage drive he saw a woman approaching the house. As he caught sight of her she caught sight of him, changed her course, and came towards him.
He stopped short with a gasp of dismay. It was Mrs. Amberley.
"Mr. Clinton," she said, "I have never had the pleasure of meeting you, but I expect you know who I am. I have come down from London on purpose to have a little talk with you."
She had altered in no way that he could have described. She was fashionably dressed, in a manner suitable for the country, her wonderful hair had not lost its lustre, her face was still the beautiful mask of whatever lurked in secret behind it. Yet she seemed to him a thing of horror, degraded and stained for all the world to see. And even the world might have been aware of some subtle change. Whether it was that her neat boots were slightly filmed with dust, or that her clothes, smart as they were, were not of the very latest; or that it was no outward sign, but the consciousness of disgrace affecting her bearing, however she might try to conceal it—whatever it was, it was there. This was a woman who had come down very low, knew that the world was against her, and would fight the world with no shame for what it could still withhold from her.
He stared at her open-mouthed, unable for the moment either to speak or think.
She laughed at him elaborately. "You don't seem very pleased to see me," she said. "May we go into the house and sit down? I have walked from the station, and am rather tired."
"No," he said quickly, reacting to his immediate impulse. "You will not enter my house."
She looked at him with careful insolence. "Shall we go into the churchyard?" she said, "and talk over Susan Clinton's grave?"
The infamous taunt brought him to himself. "Come this way," he said, and turned his back on her to stride off along a path between the shrubs.
She followed him for a few steps, and then, feeling probably that this rapid progress in his wake did not accord with her dignity, stopped and said, "Where are you taking me to, please? I haven't come here to look at your garden."
He turned sharply and faced her. "I am taking you to where we can be neither seen nor heard," he said, and waited for her to speak.
"Very well," she said. "That will suit me very well—for a first conversation—as long as it is not too far, and I am not expected to race there."
He turned his back on her and went on again, but at a slower pace. They went through a thick shrubbery and out on to a little sloping lawn at the edge of the lake, which was entirely surrounded by great rhododendrons. There was a boat-house here, and a garden seat, to which he motioned her.
She sat down, and looked up at him. "I am not going to talk to you standing over me like that," she said. "It will be giving you an unfair advantage."
He sat down on the same seat, as far away from her as possible.
"Well, what have you got to say for yourself?" she asked him, in much the same tone as a schoolmaster might have asked the question of an errant schoolboy.
He said nothing. He had nothing to say. His thoughts were still in a turmoil.
Perhaps silence was the best retort to her air of insolence. She had to find another opening.
"You call yourself a man of honour!" she said in a slow contemptuous voice. "You pay hush-money, so that the innocent may suffer, and the guilty go free."
"It's a lie," he said. "I paid no money. I refused to pay money."
"Ah, then you did know everything. It was what I could not be quite certain about. The story was confused. Thank you for clearing it up."
He felt himself trapped at the first opening of his mouth. He would need all his wits to cope with this shameless, cunning woman. He tried to break through her deliberate artifices. "What do you want?" he asked. "What have you come here for?"
"You didn't pay the money yourself?" she went on. "That would hardly have done, would it? You let somebody else pay it, and washed your hands of it, I suppose."
It had been his own phrase. Her chance lighting on it seemed to make her uncannily aware of everything that had passed. How had she got hold of her information? He had not had time to think about that yet.
"I refused to pay anything," he repeated. "Nothing was paid to anybody who had anything to do with you. I refuse to discuss these affairs with you."
"Oh, do you?" she taunted him. "Will you refuse to discuss them when you are brought up on a charge of conspiracy? You will be allowed to do it through Counsel, of course. They allowed me Counsel, when I was brought up on a charge of stealing something that a member of your family stole. I wish I could have done without him. I should have liked to defend myself. But it will suit you. You can shelter behind him. You seem rather good at that."
"What do you want?" he asked her again. "What have you come here for?"
"To talk it over quietly," she said, with the same mocking intonation. "Do you want to know how I found out about it all? You seem to have forgotten entirely that I knew that somebody staying in the house at the same time that I was must have stolen the things. It wasn't very difficult, afterwards, to decide on the thief. I have a few friends still, Mr. Clinton, and I heard that your precious Susan, whom every one knew to have been head over ears in debt, had suddenly and miraculously become out of debt, and had money to throw about. I had enquiries made, and heard that the woman whom you bought—I beg your pardon, whom you made somebody else a cat's-paw to buy, so as to save your own skin, had been sent over to the other side of the water, to get her out of the way. It was the finger of Providence, I think, that led me to follow her up. I expect you have been thinking that Providence had been specially engaged in your interests; and it certainly did look like it—for a time."
Again the uncanny cognisance of his very thoughts! But this was only a very clever woman, who knew her man, and his type.
"I went over myself, and found her," she went on. "She was going West to make a start on the money that her poor fool of a husband thought had been given him for his own sweet sake. She didn't intend to undeceive him. At one time I had had an idea of going 'West' myself. You see I had been hounded out of London for the crime that one of you Clintons had committed, and as you had so chivalrously left me to bear the burden of it, and hushed up the truth, instead of clearing my name, I didn't know then that I should be able to come back again. I wanted to get away as far as possible."
He was unendurably taunted. "Your name couldn't have been cleared," he said. "You were not condemned for that; it was for stealing the other thing; and that will stick to you still."
She affected bewilderment, and then enlightenment seemed to come to her, and she laughed. "Oh, that's it, is it?" she said. "Your mind seems to run so much in twists and curves that anyone who expects a straight sense of right and wrong in honourable men must be pardoned for being a little slow in following them. But I didn't steal that either, you know. The sainted Susan stole it as well as the necklace—she was an expert in such things—and this woman Clark told my woman about it—the one who committed perjury at my trial, and is now going to suffer for it, if I can find her."
The sneer at the dead girl pierced something in him which set his brain clear. This was a wicked woman, and she was lying to him. "That's a likely story!" he said with rough contempt, and she winced for the first time, although, with his eyes on the ground, he did not mark it.
"It is one that will keep for the present," she said, instantly recovering her coolness. "Well, fortunately I was able to make friends with Susan's maid. It is a way I have with that sort of person, although it is true that my own brute of a woman gave me away."
"Yes, she gave you away," said the Squire, more quick-witted than ordinarily.
"Lied about me, I ought to have said," she corrected herself, with a blink of the eyelids. "I see I must be careful to choose my words. Words mean so much with you, don't they? Acts so little. If you can say you haven't paid a bribe, it doesn't in the least matter that you have let it be done and taken advantage of it. Well, I made friends with her to begin with. She had just heard of Susan's death and wanted to talk about it. She couldn't keep her foolish mind off the connection between me and Susan, and spoke in such a way that I soon knew I had been right to follow her up. I drew her on—I have always been considered rather clever, you know—and before she knew she had done it she had let out her story. You may be sure I frightened her, when I could safely do so, into telling me the whole of it. I heard what a fright dear Humphrey was in—a nice young man that—came to my trial, I believe, jingling the stolen money in his pocket."
"That's not true," said the Squire. "He knew nothing of it whatever."
"He may have told you so. But six or seven thousand pounds! To repeat your own words: 'That's a likely story, isn't it?'"
"He didn't know. You can go on."
"Thank you. I heard how he came posting down here, to get the hush-money; and how it came by return of post—telegraph, I believe; I think he telegraphed to the woman, 'Blackmail will be paid,' I suppose, 'on condition do not say from father.'"
She laughed at her jest. The Squire kept miserable silence.
"Well, there it is," she said. "To use my words more carefully this time—she gave you away. You never thought you could be given away, did you? You thought you were safe. Your conscience hasn't troubled you much, I should think, to judge by your healthy appearance. Conscience never does trouble cowards much, when they can once assure themselves they won't be found out."
In the turbulent confusion of his mind, the Squire still clung to certain fixities. He had acted for the best; he had acted so that the innocent should not suffer; and if he himself had been amongst the innocent who were to escape suffering, his own safety had not been his chief thought. And if his actions, or his refraining from action, had added to the burden justly borne by the guilty, that had been inevitable if the innocent were to be saved; in any case it had added so little that he could not be blamed for ignoring it. Cowardice at least, he had thought, was no crime that could ever be laid to his charge, and he had not shown it when he had braved all consequences in refusing to lift a finger to avert the disaster that was now, in spite of all, threatening him.
But she was dragging from him all his armour, piece by piece. He let it go, and clung to his naked manhood.
"You may say what you like," he said, squaring himself and looking out over the water in front of him. "I simply stood aside. What could you—no, not you, what could anyone—have expected me to do? Publish the truth—overwhelm the innocent with the guilty; and all for what? For nothing. You were free. You——"
"Free! Yes. They had let me out of prison, that's quite true. Would you consider yourself free with that taint hanging over you? Was I free to come back to my friends? Was I free even to settle down anywhere where my story was known? Susan, the thief, was to be sheltered, because she bore the honoured name of Clinton. She was to go free. Yes. But I, who had taken her punishment, was to be left to bear the bitter results of it all my life. What meanness! What base cowardice!"
He hardened himself, but said nothing.
"Susan had stolen this necklace, worth thousands of pounds," she went on. "She had——"
"But not the jewel that you were imprisoned for stealing," he put in again.
"I have already told you that she did; and I can prove it by that woman's evidence."
He wavered, but stuck to his point. "I don't believe it," he said, "and you can leave it out."
"I will, because it doesn't really matter whether you believe it or not. You will believe it when you see her in the witness-box."
"You won't get her into the witness-box, to swear to that."
"Well, we shall see. There's no sense in haggling with you over that. We will leave it out, as you advised. I was talking about Susan. She and your precious Humphrey had spent the money that they had got from the sale, or pawning, or whatever it was, of the pearls she had stolen."
"I have already said," he interposed quietly, "that Humphrey knew nothing of it."
"And I have already said, 'That's a likely story!' However, we need not press the point now. Say she had had all the money if you like, and that he—dear innocent—never noticed that she was spending some thousands of pounds more than he allowed her. If you like to believe that it's your affair; we shall have plenty of opportunities of judging what view other people will take of it, by and by. At any rate, the money was spent—the stolen money—and you, a rich man, can sit down quietly and let somebody else bear the loss of it."
He knew he was giving himself into her hands, but he could not help himself. "That's not true," he said.
She looked at him, her lip curling. "Oh! you sent it back—anonymously perhaps. You did have that much honesty."
"You can make what use of the admission you like," he said. "I told Lord Sedbergh the story, and offered him the money."
This set her a little aback. "He knows the truth, then," she exclaimed. "Another man of honour! He lets me lie under the stigma of having stolen something that he's got the price of in his pocket all the time. Upon my word! You're a pretty pair! I'm not certain that he's not worse than you are."
He struggled with himself, but only for a moment, and then said, "He refused to take the money."
She was quick to take that up. "Oh! I see. Dear me, how I should have enjoyed being present at that interview. You go to him with the delightful proposal that he shall make himself party to your meanness, and he refuses. Yes. I suppose he would. I've no reason to suppose there are two men of supposed honour who could act quite as vilely as you have done. Come now, Mr. Clinton, I've given you a piece of gratuitous information. Supposing you return it by telling me what he said to you. Did he tell you what he really thought of you, or only hint it?"
"Oh, let's have an end of this," he said, with agonised impatience. "What have you come here for? What do you want?"
Her manner changed. "Yes, we will have an end of it," she said, with quick scorn. "It's useless to tell you what I think of your meanness, and how I despise your cowardice. I should have respected you much more if you had paid your blackmail down like a man, and then kept quiet about it, instead of running snivelling about trying to salve your own conscience. But a man who can believe as you have has no shame. You can't touch him by showing him up to himself. You can, though, by making him pay for it. And I'm going to make you pay—to the last rag of reputation you've got left."
She clenched her fist, and bent towards him fiercely. On his fathomless trouble her change of attitude made no new impression. What mattered it whether she sneered or stormed? The truth would be known; the pit of disgrace was already yawning for him.
"I can't touch Susan," she went on. "If I could, I'd drag her out of her grave and set her up for all the world to mock at."
The intensity with which she said this affected him not merely to horror. He began to see dimly what an adversary he had to cope with, and the burning rage against circumstance that must consume her. Even if all he had comforted himself with was true—if she was guilty of stealing the diamonds, and had suffered for that alone—still, she had suffered for Susan's crime. For if Susan had been found out, she would, or might, have gone undetected. How that knowledge must smoulder or blaze in her mind, night and day—all the worse if she was partly guilty! He might expect no mercy from her.
"I will make her name a mockery," she cried, "and I'll make yours stink in the nostrils of every decent honest man and woman in the country. I've only to tell my story. You can't deny it; you won't be allowed to. But I'll do more than that. I'll make you stand where I stood; first in the police court, then in the dock—you and Humphrey together, and your other son too and his wife, who paid the money. Tell your story then, and see what's thought of you! Some of them may get off—but you won't. You'll go where I went—to a vile and horrible prison, where you'll be with the scum of the earth; where you'll have plenty of time to think it all over, and whether it wouldn't have been better for you, after all, to tell the truth and shame the devil,—you dastardly coward!"
Her voice had risen almost to a shriek. He looked round him, in fear that it would bring someone to the scene. But the lake was retired, and seldom visited. They were quite alone.
"Yes, I suppose you would like to move away," she said in a voice more controlled, but still quivering with rage. "You can't run away. You'll have to face it now; you and your whole family, guilty and innocent. I'll make you suffer through them, as well as in yourself. You'll never wipe off the blot, never in all your life, not even when you come out of prison and come back here—a man that nobody will speak to again, for all your wealth and position. You can think of that when you're in your cell. They give you plenty of time to think. It's not more than I suffered; it's not so much, because I was innocent. But I'd no children and grandchildren to make it worse. You have. It's your name you've blackened. Clinton will mean thief, and conspirator, and everything that's vile long after you are dead."
He had heard enough. He got up, turned his back on her, and began to walk very slowly across the little lawn, his head bent. She watched him with a look of hate, which gradually faded to scorn, then to cunning, then to expectation. But it became dismay when, having crossed the grass, he did not turn, but kept on between the shrubs, as if he had forgotten her, and were going to leave her there alone.
She had to call to him. "Where are you going?"
He turned at once, and the look on his face might have made her pity him, if she had had any pity in her.
"You must do what you will," he said. "There is nothing more to be said."
Then he turned from her again, and pursued his slow, contemplative walk along the path, his shoulders bent, his steps dragging a little, like those of an old man.